White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. predicted Sunday that the Senate will confirm Judge Robert H. Bork as a Supreme Court justice after a "controversial, tumultuous, even pyrotechnic debate" produces a "searching evaluation" of President Reagan's nominee. Baker, former Republican leader of the Senate, said he based this judgment on conversations with the bipartisan leadership of the Senate and the Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on the nomination.

Prospects for an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate medium- and short-range nuclear missiles from Europe have become "very good" because of a developing agreement between the United States and its allies, White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. declared Tuesday.

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. earned more than $1.2 million in attorney fees and profits from a law partnership last year and an additional $393,611 as a consultant and board director for major American companies, according to his financial disclosure statement made public Tuesday. In the statement, Baker listed $121,500 in income from making speeches, with payments averaging about $14,000 per appearance.

In the gulag of the White House press room, they call it "American glasnost. " As in the Soviet Union, where it refers to Mikhail S. Gorbachev's new internal policies, it means "openness." At the White House, however, glasnost is a key element in Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr.'s effort to portray President Reagan as a man recovering from the damage of the Iran- contra scandal.

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., forced to abandon his presidential bid when he joined President Reagan's staff three weeks ago, has turned over his political action committee to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). Lugar, an ambitious, second-term senator sometimes mentioned as a GOP vice presidential prospect, said he intends to continue Baker's practice of using the Washington-based Republican Majority Fund to help reelect incumbent Republican senators.

White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. assumes that the Iran- contra affair is not over, but said Sunday he also is "convinced that we are not likely to have any big, new, devastating development" when former National Security Council aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter testify before Congress.

Howard H. Baker Jr. is a former Senate majority leader and a former presidential candidate--a man more accustomed to giving orders than to taking them. But now he has a button on his White House telephone labeled "P.L. Pres." When the button on that private line lights up, Baker is reminded that he is now working for someone else: the President of the United States. "It is the first time Howard Baker has ever been in a role where he was not the guy at the pinnacle.

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, widening his legal inquiry into the Iran- contra scandal, last week submitted an "unbelievably extensive" request for White House and National Security Council documents potentially totaling hundreds of thousands of pages of material, government sources said Sunday.

White House Communications Director John O. Koehler, named to the post last month only days before embattled White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan resigned, is leaving after only a week on the job at the request of new Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr., an Administration official said Saturday. Koehler will be transferred to the U. S. Information Agency. His replacement has not been selected, said the official, who refused to be identified.

Former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.), moving quickly to mend the Administration's tattered relations with Congress, said Wednesday that President Reagan has been hurt by the Iran- contra affair but that the damage is "not irreparable by any means."